Find out what it’s like to work in Children’s Social Care in Wigan.
Here at Wigan Council, we strive through The Deal 2030 to give children, young people, and families the best possible experiences, outcomes and start in life. We recognise the importance of providing our staff with an environment where good social work practice can flourish and are committed to getting it right, not just for our children and families, but for our passionate and dedicated workforce.
“Staff were unanimously positive when speaking with inspectors about working in Wigan… Social workers said that they feel valued and listened to and told inspectors that senior managers collaborate with them to find better ways to improve outcomes for children” (Ofsted Focus Visit June 2022)
Our BeWigan culture is important to us and is what sets us apart at Wigan. We have a culture of kindness and recognise that how we do things is just as important as what we do. There are a wealth of development opportunities to support you and often these are tailored to your individual needs and future career aspirations. We know our Social Care teams do an outstanding job in supporting families, and we regularly reward and recognise great social work practice.
Children’s Services has received significant investment and has a newly formed leadership team that are driving the vision forward, ensuring we have strong foundations in place to support you to develop and grow your career in Wigan too. Our managers support practitioners to think outside the box, implementing innovative practice with children and families.
There are new opportunities available across a range of teams, and we would love to welcome you in joining us at an exciting time in our journey.
Our staff benefit from a blended approach to working where they have the benefits of spending time with a supportive team, but also the flexibility remote working provides. Free staff car parking, within a ten minute walk, across borough wide bases ensures convenience for commuting.
“I find working for Wigan’s Children’s Services extremely rewarding. Senior Leaders and managers are passionate about providing a culture of kindness which prioritises the best interests of the children we work with, whilst supporting staff. There is good quality training driving excellent practice while also allowing opportunities for professional development and career progression.
The hybrid working model means I have the choice to work where suits me best and when the team do come together the free parking and town centre location make it easy.”
Claire, Advanced Practitioner
“Being able to work flexibly makes me feel valued and trusted and means that I can best support the children and families I work with, while having a healthy work life balance.”
Jenny, Social Worker
Apply for one of our social care vacancies now
Team Wigan Top 5
As well as having leadership you can trust in, amazing and supportive colleagues and plenty of development opportunities, there is so much more that comes with being a member of Team Wigan family. Here are our Team Wigan Top 5 reasons to join us:
- Hybrid working that takes a ‘flexible first’ approach for a healthy work-life balance. Not only is this approach better for our team’s health and wellbeing but benefits the children and families that we support and work with too.
- With our investment plans, we are striving to achieve manageable caseloads, which enables our teams to spend quality time with children and families.
- We strive to provide a safe and trusted space, support when needed and ensure time and opportunities to reflect.
- An extensive wellbeing offer we are proud of that includes support for all our staff for mental health, physical health, help with finances and general support. There are also discounted gym memberships on offer too.
- Our staff work so hard, and we love to recognise this and reward them for going above and beyond every day for our children and families. The BeWigan Awards is a fantastic annual event to say ‘thank you’ to our amazing staff.
It sounds exciting, right? If all that wasn’t enough, you can find more information on reasons to join the Wigan family by visiting our Working for Wigan Council page or our Why Wigan? page.
How We Work
How we do things in Wigan is just as important as what we do.
Signs of Safety practice model
Since 2019, we have adopted the Signs of Safety as our practice model. Signs of Safety is an innovative and strength-based approach to working with children and families across early help and social care and goes hand in hand with our Deal principles and The Deal 2030. It provides us with the framework to support our BeWigan behaviours of being accountable, courageous, positive and kind, strengthening practice so our staff feel confident in what they do.
Learning, professional development and opportunities to reflect
Supporting staff working across social care to learn and grow and develop in their careers is critical. At Team Wigan every staff member has a regular My Time (personal and professional supervision) with their manager where they can discuss their future career aspirations and learning and development needs in further detail. We promote a culture of learning and celebrate good practice, learning from situations where things have not gone as well as we would have liked.
Deal for ASYE
Newly qualified social workers joining Wigan benefit from Wigan’s Deal for ASYE. It aims to ensure that all newly qualified social workers in Wigan feel that they have the right level of emotional and practical support in place to help them develop and excel as social work practitioners.
We will ensure that all newly qualified social workers will be provided with an ASYE assessor on their first day, and they will be allocated to a Workforce Development Advanced Practitioner to oversee their first year in practice. Furthermore, access to a robust package of support, training and learning opportunities, as part of our ASYE deal co-ordinated by the Workforce Development Leads.
The Newly qualified social worker will be provided with monthly ASYE workshops, Monthly ASYE skills sessions and monthly reflective supervision.
Research in practice
We are partnered with Research in Practice, who provide learning and development as well as expertise and training. The resources are designed to develop, expand and maintain your knowledge on a wide range of topics.
The Workforce Essentials Sharepoint (WES)
As part of ensuring all our social workers are well supported and have easy access to the latest guidance and information, we provide Workforce Essentials held on Microsoft SharePoint, known as WES. This is an electronic resource of documents that includes guidance, top tips and good examples of practice.
Click here to find out more about our Social Work practice in Wigan!
Meet our Teams
Our award-winning staff and teams work together to ensure all children in Wigan are happy, healthy, and safe. Although our teams are split into specific specialism areas, all these areas work together and with our partners to support our children and families using an asset-based approach. Our teams consist of:
- Integrated Front Door (IFD)
- Front Door (Duty and Assessment)
- Complex Safeguarding Team
- Locality / Neighbourhood Teams
- Children in Care Teams
- Leaving Care Team
- Targeted Disability Service
- Adoption Team
- Start Well Service (Early Help)
- Targeted Youth Support Service (TYSS)
- Fostering Service
- Quality Assurance and Workforce Development
- Independent Safeguarding and Partnership Unit
Click here to find out more about our teams and what they do!
